Tag Archives: Waiting List

News

Single-payer health care is falling apart in Canada

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Story from Reuters. (H/T Hot Air via ECM)

Excerpt:

Pressured by an aging population and the need to rein in budget deficits, Canada’s provinces are taking tough measures to curb healthcare costs, a trend that could erode the principles of the popular state-funded system.

Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, kicked off a fierce battle with drug companies and pharmacies when it said earlier this year it would halve generic drug prices and eliminate “incentive fees” to generic drug manufacturers.

British Columbia is replacing block grants to hospitals with fee-for-procedure payments and Quebec has a new flat health tax and a proposal for payments on each medical visit — an idea that critics say is an illegal user fee.

And a few provinces are also experimenting with private funding for procedures such as hip, knee and cataract surgery.

It’s likely just a start as the provinces, responsible for delivering healthcare, cope with the demands of a retiring baby-boom generation. Official figures show that senior citizens will make up 25 percent of the population by 2036.

Ooops. Maybe that whole taxpayer-funded abortions for free thing was not such a good idea for a welfare state like Canada. In their defense, they only have a Ponzie scheme for health care, their retirement system is solid compared to Social Security.

Investors Business Daily explains:

Western dabbling in socialism has shown that public health care systems funded by other people’s money are unsustainable. The provision of “free” care is a losing game. Because it is perceived to be free, demand in such a system will outstrip supply. Costs can’t help but rise.

[…]In 2009, health care spending in Canada devoured 40% of the provincial governments’ budgets and expenditures have been rising by 6% a year. At that rate, or even half that rate, it wouldn’t be long before the provincial governments did nothing but fund health care. The Ontario government says health care spending could consume 70% of its budget within just 12 years.

Some of the blame can be placed on an aging population. Reuters reports that one-fourth of Canada’s population in 2036 will be senior citizens. But it’s the nature of the system, its near monopoly and its ambition to serve every Canadian, that makes it unsustainable. It has grown from 7% of provincial governments’ spending in the 1970s to the 40% it is today merely because it is a government giveaway that people cannot get enough of.

The Cato Institute compares Canada to bankrupt Greece here.

In different parts of Canada, things like in vitro fertilization, abortions, and sex changes are well-funded by the government. They actually restrict the number of doctors in order to ration billing the government for services. Many people cannot even find doctors! People just go on waiting lists for months and months and they die on waiting lists waiting for brain cancer treatment, after having paid into the system for their whole lives! (Because abortions are more important than brain cancer in Canada – it buys more votes, you know).

Related movies on Canadian health care

A Short Course in Brain Surgery:

Two Women:

The Lemon:

And one more video from On The Fence Films called “Dead Meat“.

Related posts

News

How well does government-run health care work in Australia?

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From the Sydney Morning Herald. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Westmead Hospital is cancelling surgery at four times the rate the Health Department considers acceptable, and waiting times are so long some surgeons are refusing to add new patients to their operating lists.

About 8 per cent of elective surgery patients at the flagship Sydney University teaching hospital had their operation cancelled on the day of surgery, due to a shortage of post-surgical beds.

[…]Those cancellations – which Professor Fletcher said affected up to half of patients for some types of surgery – were not formally recorded.

[…]Hospitals in western Sydney have suffered staff freezes and bed cuts due to debts that last year reached $26 million.

This is what happens when you take the profit motive out of health care. If there is no way to make money, then there is no free capital that flows into the industry. If there is no free capital, then the only way to expand is by raises taxes. If taxes are already too high, then the only way to control demand is by using waiting lists. And naturally the people in power will favor the special interest groups who vote for them with faster access to treatment.

News

How is socialized medicine working out in the UK and Canada?

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First, this one from ECM, which appeared in the leftist UK Guardian. (H/T Secondhand Smoke)

Excerpt:

Blunders by GPs, hospital doctors and nurses jeopardised the health of thousands of patients when cancer was misdiagnosed or not spotted soon enough, according to an NHS report.

Over a period of a year, doctors failed to spot key signs of cancer, tissue samples were mixed up, some patients were wrongly given an all-clear and vital diagnostic tests were delayed because of staff and equipment shortages, the study, undertaken by the NHS’s National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA), found.

[…]When 508 cases were examined in detail, it was found that 177 patients were harmed. Two died, 25 suffered severe harm, 52 moderate harm and 88 low harm. Of a sample of 150 patients, 37% experienced delays of up to three months, 38% of more than three months and some had delays of three years. The government estimates that 10,000 die each year because of late diagnosis of cancer. The UK is poor by international standards at diagnosing cancer, studies have shown.

The post features tons of alarming examples. There’s socialism. When you don’t have your money in your hand, you cannot expect to be treated properly. You need a choice among providers to negotiate the best deal for your dollars.

Next, also from ECM, this one from the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

The Ambulance service is being paid bonuses for not taking patients to hospital in a bid to help the NHS hit controversial targets.

Patients’ groups expressed horror at the “sick experiment” in which NHS managers have agreed to pay £38 for every casualty that ambulance staff “keep out of Accident and Emergency” (A&E) departments after a 999 call has been made.

The tactic is part of an attempt to manage increasing demand for emergency care amid failings in the GP out-of-hours system.

[…]The bonuses are among dozens of schemes being tried out by ambulance trusts across the country as they attempt to improve their emergency response times and help A&E departments meet controversial targets to treat all patients within four hours of arrival.

Another plan uncovered would see thousands of 999 calls currently classed as urgent downgraded so that callers receive telephone advice instead of an ambulance response.

But we’ll soon surpass them, I’m sure.

But wait! Maybe Canada’s single-payer system is better!

The left-wing Montreal Gazette reports.

Excerpt:

Health Minister Yves Bolduc said Friday over-crowding in Quebec’s hospital emergency rooms would be resolved in “four or five years.”

“We have the best health care system in the world,” Bolduc said, while admitting that patients sometimes have to wait for that care.

“All the patients are well treated,” he said.

[…]Quebec still has a shortage of doctors and nurses, he said…

[…]Bolduc announced his newest timetable in response to reports patients are kept for 48 hours and longer in emergency.

As well, relatives are blaming deaths in their families on emergency-room congestion.

From the communist CBC, here’s more:

Guy Morisette, head of the Outaouais health agency, told CBC News that the hospital has worked hard to fix the situation, but recruiting and retaining enough staff remains a problem, and additional solutions such as training personnel and developing new programs are longer-term efforts.

Hospital Average ER Wait Time
Buckingham 20 h 30 min
Gatineau Hospital-Hull campus 20 h 06 min
Gatineau Hospital-Gatineau campus 25 h 36 min
Gatineau-Memorial 17 h 00 min
Maniwaki 10 h 24 min
Pontiac 13 h 12 min
Outaouais average 20 h 42 min
Quebec average 16 h 30 min

Taxing and regulating doctors and treating patients for paper cuts for FREE doesn’t create a shortage of health care at all. Oh, no. And anyway, the politicians just get treated in the USA anyway.

Last, Quebec, Canada’s most liberal province, proposes massive user fees.

Excerpt:

Quebeckers are bracing themselves for sweeping increases in taxes, rates and fees after a provincial budget that also proposes a controversial user fee for health-care services.

By proposing a fee for medical appointments, the 2010-11 budget tabled Tuesday represents a shift in how the province addresses spiralling health-care costs, and could trigger a national debate over conflicts with the Canada Health Act.

[…]The user fee would take the form of a deductible that, according to one proposal, would be capped so that total charges do not exceed 1 per cent of a family’s annual income. It would involve charging $25 per medical visit and be paid on a fee-for-service basis. It was estimated under one proposal that a couple with two children making 10 medical visits a year would pay a maximum of $250 annually.

The government of Premier Jean Charest also announced a new health tax to commence in June, 2010, that will be levied on individuals when they file their income taxes. The “health contribution” will cost adults $25 this year and eventually climb to $200 in 2012. Lower-income families will be exempt. When fully implemented, the new tax will generate $945-million a year.

Ontario already has massive income tax rates, property taxes, surtaxes, sales taxes, municipal taxes and health care surcharges of hundreds of dollars a year. It’s not just that they have no freedom of speech, but they die waiting for health care. (This isn’t the Conservative Party’s fault – they don’t have a majority yet to bring in market reforms to lower the cost of health care, and they don’t have a majority of the Senate and not even close to a majority in the Supreme Court).